Flavor profile questions

[impatient one]

This probably has already been asked, but where does one find information on the different grain, malt, hops, yeast, flavor profiles, and what go together to form specific kinds of beers and or flavors? I've looked into different recipes and there seems to be literally hundreds of variations of everything. Is everything either a clone, or a variation of a clone? This is a new hobby for me. I'm also a chef, and with being a chef, different flavors go together to enhance the meal or change the flavor. Different ways to cook it also changes flavor. I'm one who needs to know how one reacts with the other. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[AlexKay]

This is a great question. Recipe creation is one of the best parts of this hobby for me. I’ll share a few of the things I’ve done that I feel have helped establish my own experience base:

• Brew often. Brewing small batches (1 gallon) means you can brew more, try more things, and learn more.
• Taste raw malt by chewing a large pinch. (Use a small pinch for roasted grains. Don’t taste acid malt, malted oats, or Carapils; everything else is good.) Don’t taste hop pellets, but definitely smell them. Taste sweet wort (before adding hops.) Drink your hydrometer samples. Taste beer while it’s fermenting and at bottling time.
• Make SMaSH beers — that’s Single Malt and Single Hop. It’s one of the best ways to learn your ingredients, and they can be good beers in their own right. (If it appeals to you, you can make hop water, too, as a great way to learn new aroma hops.)
• Even when you’re not making a SMaSH, try to simplify your recipes. Just about any beer can be executed well with four or fewer types of malt — usually fewer. Ditto on hops: at most two aroma hops.
• If you find a recipe you like, post it on the Recipes forum here and ask people to comment on what each ingredient is doing.
• Split batches: make double the wort, split it between two fermenters, and use different yeasts in each. Or ferment at a different temperature. Or dry hop differently.
• Folks may push back on this suggestion, but read Josh Weikert’s “Make your best …” articles. There are dozens of them, and one for any style you’re likely to want to start with. He’s not an authority on world beers, to say the least, but he starts the article by telling you what he’s trying for, and then tells you why he’s selecting each ingredient, and how he thinks it’s going to get him where he wants to be.
• Join a homebrew club. Others’ perspectives on your beer are always useful. Plus, when you try someone else’s beer, you’ll be able to ask “how did you get this particular biscuit/rum-raisin/banana/guava taste.”

 

[kev211]

Agreed with everything AlexKay said, the SMaSH beers were a great way to learn for me (especially different hop profiles). It should be stated that for the grains in smash beers you should stick with your base grains. Im sure someone has tried it, but a smash beer made with C80L would not be good. Once you've learned what your basic 2-row beers taste like, start adding in your crystal and roasted malts and see how they change things.

Another way that i still find helpful is google (and I dont say that to be a jerk). If my LHBS is out of a hop and Im unfamiliar with substitutions, Ill throw out a quick google search. There are a few sites that list good substitutes with their flavor profiles.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

This is a new hobby for me. I'm also a chef, and with being a chef, different flavors go together to enhance the meal or change the flavor.

How did you learn what ingredients go together when cooking? Likely by starting with published recipes, and experimenting from there. While beer is not as complex as cooking, there really is an almost infinite number of combinations that can be made. Much of it needs to be learned by hands on experience. I suspect you could read descriptions of Basil, Cilantro, and Mint that made them seem almost interchangeable. It can be the same with just reading about different grains, hops or yeast. Brewing is a bit more like baking though, in that you mix your ingredients together and it is hard to tell how it will turn out until your beer "bakes" for 4 weeks (or more).

I really enjoy the investigative side of brewing...trying out new hops or yeast, or playing with different techniques. One thing I realized is that you cannot wait until you know "everything" to jump in. You can have a recipe for cinnamon rolls that you enjoy and continue to make, without having to do a deep dive into the 100s of different options you have for cinnamon (though maybe sometimes you want to try out a batch with a different type of cinnamon). You can also brew a published recipe for a German Wheat beer without understanding every different possible yeast, or fermentation temp, or pitch rate, or mash temp, or wheat ratio, etc. Or you could take a deep dive into brewing German Wheat beers, spending endless hours reading, and brewing 100 different batches.

 

[G_robertus]

I agree with pretty much anything written previously, although I've never had issues trying malted oats and sometimes very much don't agree with Weikert. Another thing that can help you discover flavours is making 'malt tea' by steeping grains in warm water. If you want you could even make a mini mash. Thermos flasks work very nicely. If you really want to know what they taste like in beer you could ferment it with a pinch of yeast, but tea itself tells you a few things about malt flavour.

Split batches with different dry hops or different amounts of dry hops are also very useful in finding out flavours and amounts you like. If you want you can even make a split batch with different steeped malts that you add to the fermenter. Also try splitting various styles of beers when testing yeast as they don't behave the same in each recipe. E.g. I know I like verdant in IPA and stout with OG <1.090; but I prefer New England in >1.100 stouts.

 

[AlexKay]

I agree with pretty much anything written previously, although I've never had issues trying malted oats and sometimes very much don't agree with Weikert. Another thing that can help you discover flavours is making 'malt tea' by steeping grains in warm water. If you want you could even make a mini mash. Thermos flasks work very nicely. If you really want to know what they taste like in beer you could ferment it with a pinch of yeast, but tea itself tells you a few things about malt flavour.

Split batches with different dry hops or different amounts of dry hops are also very useful in finding out flavours and amounts you like. If you want you can even make a split batch with different steeped malts that you add to the fermenter. Also try splitting various styles of beers when testing yeast as they don't behave the same in each recipe. E.g. I know I like verdant in IPA and stout with OG <1.090; but I prefer New England in >1.100 stouts.

The trouble with oats is that their husk cannot be chewed and swallowed. Not a problem with huskless oats (Simpsons Golden Naked, for instance.) Regular malted oats taste nice, and then you realize you’re chawing a mass of vegetal matter you won’t be able to swallow.

Malt tea is a good idea. The current ASBC method is to use a coffee grinder and filter, but you have to pretty much commit the grinder to grain — a tall order for me, since I already dedicate one grinder to spices and a second to coffee.

And yes, I don’t always agree with Weikert, but even when I don’t, his ideas give me something worth thinking about.

 

[Kickass]

For hops, this is an invaluable tool

https://beermaverick.com/hops/hop-comparison-tool/

For grain and yeast, I typically check the company’s website. They often have a neat chart with the flavor descriptor’s.

Additionally, a lot of brewing books have robust charts with flavor profiles of the most common hops, grain and yeast.

Lastly, SMaSH (single malt and single hop) beers are a fantastic way to learn, albeit a fairly slow process.

 

[G_robertus]

Malt tea is a good idea. The current ASBC method is to use a coffee grinder and filter, but you have to pretty much commit the grinder to grain — a tall order for me, since I already dedicate one grinder to spices and a second to coffee.

Depending on the amount you're making you could use a pestle and mortar, provided they're not covered in crap. I have an extra grinder for things like oats, but sometimes I also just use my regular mil and pass it through several times. I also just use cheese cloth as an improvised BIAB.

And yes, I don’t always agree with Weikert, but even when I don’t, his ideas give me something worth thinking about.

Sorry, maybe I didn't clarify enough, but I don't agree with some contents of the recipes. The way he describes and picks out ingredients is indeed very helpful when trying to think of what to make of a recipe. I take a similar approach to selecting ingredients.